Like
it or not, Twitter is one of the hottest sites on the internet.
The service allows a unique way to get updates on your friends,
favorite celebrities, sports teams, and companies you like.
What was once a personal social networking tool is now becoming a hot
business tool as well.

Twitter faces a monetization problem,
though, much like an early Google. It is taking aggressive
steps to fix that, though. It's made a wave of high profile
acquisitions, including a tweet search platform in 2008 (Summize) and
the acquisition this week of Tweetie, makers of the top Twitter app
for the iPhone. It also published its own Twitter app for the
Blackberry. Upcoming
acquisitions may include a URL shrinker service and a
Twitpic provider.

Now a Twitter spokesperson speaking
withThe
Wall Street Journal has
revealed that the company plans is rolling out "Promoted
Tweets", essentially short text ads that would appear in your
stream of followed microblogs. Today, between 2 and 10 percent
of users will receive the ads.

The internet site, currently
valued at $1B USD, is looking to follow Google's
search-advertising success. During the initial deployment, it
plans to work hard to tweak the implementation and pricing to make
the service as profitable for it as possible, while trying to keep
user annoyance to a minimum.

Twitter developers, who made a
host of apps to fill in the platform's holes, aren't
happy with the company and are promising
to revolt. After the Tweetie acquisition, the devs are
looking to cook up their own Twitter rival. Describes one dev,
"Discussion is not whether to launch an open federated standard,
but when."